not what i signed up for

so today was supposed to be the big day...career counselling appointment...torpedoed by good intentions. i've been talking to the nice folks at the employee assistance program at work, talking a little about my stress, anxiety, sleep problems...i don't think it's really working...anyway, i asked the last counsellor i talked to if they could do any career counselling, and she said she could set me up with an appointment to talk to someone. i assumed she meant 'a career counsellor'. silly me. i guess she thought i needed more therapy or something. the dude i talked to was another shrink. his only good advice was to spend some serious time hearing from friends about career possibilities and suggestions from the people who know me and my strengths and weaknesses and maybe what i might like. it's a wierd deal i guess, cuz i don't know that i could point at you guys and suggest career ideas, but i'll give it some thought. i'd also be appreciative of any book suggestions about being more happy where i am, or reinventing myself, or self diagnosis career test kinda stuff - ya know... self help. but i will never read 'the purpose driven life' ever. i would like to say that if any of y'all are willing to take me up on my asking for advice there will be no bad suggestions, or anything. (kinda like the no stupid questions rule...) i'd really appreciate any thoughts you might have folks...
i'm not real satisfied with being 30 and working in retail, especially when i'm not even low level management. (and they're shutting down a big store - 110 bloor chapters - so i'm guessing it's not good for people looking for promotion to have all these transfers floating around....'bad timing that's all...' story of my life - except for the sarah parts...) i do actually like the customer service part of work - i like to help people. and i like books. and i like talking about books. and i like to help people. it's nice to be rewarded for being a nice guy i guess, and retail life has actually made me a nicer person. that's the single biggest non-benefits thing keeping me at indigo. also i'm still there cuz i'm closer to a promotion at indigo than anywhere else, and i don't know if i have good skills that can earn me any more money than i'm making at indigo without trading health risks or shitty environments or something. i always tell people that there's lots worse jobs than working in a bookstore. i just wish i could get paid well enough to make a life, not just rent.
also i realize that i'm not the only one in this particular boat...it's just become an issue at this point for me. don't know how much of it is turning 30 - hopefully not too much.
i'm thinking about dreams of the life i wanna make with sarah. kid(s)....house....not the storm of fear and stress and worry that i grew up in...opportunities... this dream ain't gonna make itself.
so...maybe it's time to work on this whole thing. i could stay at indigo and work up through the ranks kinda, make a decent living in there somewhere, and not have to incur some debt to get the edumacation. that's definitely an option. i just haven't ever really had any clear idea of my dream job (aside from the nba...) and i'd like to find out if there is a dream job. i know that there are more rewarding and challenging jobs, and some that pay well, but they could still just be a job. maybe that's fine too. i just don't know at this point.
bah...enough ranting.

i had the most wonderful time at michelle's birthday party on saturday night, even though i didn't get to share as many words with everybody as i would've liked to. we'll remedy that in the near future.

sad news from the nba - being down 3 games to 1 to the san antonio spurs is pretty clearly a bad place for steve nash and the pheonix suns to be. (it's a best of seven.) so steve nash might not be playing much longer this season. so sad.

ha ha michelle i didn't put the nba notes at the end this time so you had to read the whole thing...ummm...well actually maybe i did cuz i can't think of anything else to say at this point.

time to go help sarah make dinner. it's beef that's been marinating in a peanutty curry kinda deal for a couple days now. jealous? also you missed the chicken and sausage jambalaya i threw together the other day.

oh yeah on the book front - i've finished 'the delicate storm' and moved on to the new book in the trilogy by giles blunt 'black fly season'. seemed kinda seasonal. also i like the characters. but i really gotta find something really good after this. it occurs to me that i haven't really recommended anything i've read for awhile now. next book's gotta be recommendable. now open for suggestions - go!

oh yeah

just finished reading "the thin man". (had lots of time at the hospital this morning...) pretty fun read. i really like the characters. sometimes they remind me of us (the group of friends "us", not just me and sarah). kinda nice to see a similar sense of humour. what next?
i tend to become attached to characters, so maybe i'll pick up the sequel to "40 words for sorrow" when i hobble into work tomorrow...or maybe i won't...

good gnus, bad noose

so last night i was playing basketball like i do every wednesday. we were having a bit of a tough time against this team, but we were hanging in there - a one or two basket game. we were all sharing the load, spreading the scoring...i had this pretty little drive, put my defender back on his heels and drilled a shot right over him. showed good hustle...hit the dirt for a couple loose balls, tracked down a couple wild passes and rebounds, threw a couple beauty passes, set screens....i was also playing ok defense. i rotated over, or dropped down to double a guy and ruined a couple shots...anyway, i had just stepped down to help cuz andrew had gotten caught on a screen, had a clean block on this guys shot, but we landed awkwardly, legs kinda tangled up. my left knee (formerly known as "my good knee") torqued...i think it seperated a little maybe, or bent sideways the littlest bit....needless to say i went down in a lot of pain. it was totally flukey. just bad luck how it happened. oh well. i went to the hospital today, got it xrayed. no permanent damage, but some stretched ligaments, inflamed joint, swelling...might not be able to play basketball for the whole week!!! it was a little funny cuz the guys on my team didn't at first realize i was hurt. "you went down pretty hard, but you often go down pretty hard - it's just the way you play...". and it was only 10 minutes into the game. unfortunately, with me out the guys did their best but then we were too shorthanded (no subs for the next 30 minutes), and the other team started to pull away late in the second half. sigh.
so that's the bad noose.

the good gnus - sarah got a job! at the Queen of Tarts!! woo-hoo!!! unfortunately she'll have to work weekends all summer, and her weekday shifts are 3-7pm, so we'll see a bit less of each other too. good job though and they're gonna pay her pretty well.
actually she's gonna be making more than me again...not really bitter about that...

don't panic, 42, too late

not such a good day in paul-ville. i woke up this morning...hard to go back to work after a pretty good long weekend...i went in to work...an hour later i had a panic attack. kind of a bad one. stuck with me until not too long ago. although i've been home since before noon. sigh. so this is my body's way of telling me how unhappy i am i guess. stupid body i already knew that. at least now i can look forward to a short week.
might have found a way to not pay a thousand dollars for career counselling - through the Employee Assistance Program hired by Indigo. (totally confidential and all that. no actual indigo employees work there...). i have a phone appointment on tuesday evening. we'll see. in the meantime, i will look into going back to school some more. finish some kinda university degree and all that. in the meantime i will also apply for a promotion at the queensway chapters. (looks like 45 mins by streetcar/bus...not too bad). (michelle and adam get ready to be references again...)
i am almost done '40 words for sorrow'. tomorrow i will borrow a new book from the store. i just have to leave myself enough book to get me through the streetcar ride to work or something. kinda wish there was a good new fantasy novel to read. actually i wish any of a bunch of the authors i normally read would finish their next book, and not start any new series'. or maybe i want some pretty prose. the kind that's quotable, or at least you might fold over the page with the good line if you owned the book. we'll see what i come up with. i'll let you all know. maybe kendra's suggestion fo 'the thin man'...
possible careers that i can't rule out for myself outright-
teaching
journalism - especially basketball
stay at home dad
sound guy(?)
....i dunno...stay at home dad is my favourite for sure, but that sorta requires your other to earn some decent bread, and for there to be a child...
none of those are real dream jobs though. just decent options that i'd hopefully find rewarding and could potentially provide a family living kinda wage. i guess i'm looking for ideas still. i'd appreciate anybody to suggest either new career ideas, or ways to get closer to the ones i've thought of. i dunno. hopefully this career counselling thingy will have some tricks.
i'm no genius but i'm kinda guessing that this trouble sleeping and the panic attacks are related to me not having a sense of self-career-kinda-accomplishment-kinda-worth. so i attack the root of the problem with roto-rooter of my cavernous mind...hmm...roto-rooter of my large head...hmmm...my great huge cranium will block the sun from the weeds' roots...i will endeavour to get at the root of the problem, thereby alleviating the need for any band-aid solutions to the symptoms thereof.
when's the last time anybody used thereof in a sentence?

for those who lost touch, steve nash and the pheonix suns lost game one of the western conference finals on their home court to the san antonio spurs. game two is tonight. again i say 'stupid western time zones'. also shaquille oneal and the miami heat also lost game one to the detroit pistons. we don't like this trend.
i have to go and try to defend feudal japan from some fictional mongol invasions now. so far i'm doing ok, but i've learned that while you can fairly easily defend against mongol cavalry by forcing them to attack you uphill or in a forest or both, you really need cavalry of your own if you are attacking them. (btw - the mongols never actually landed in japan, owing to a bad storm that wrecked their fleet of ships en route. otherwise, who knows? also genghis khan was the first leader to institute the idea of no taxes on medecine, teaching or religion, and to allow freedom of religious expression - there's a really funny story about how he got a priest from the vatican, a buddhist, and an islamic cleric to debate who was right, and they had to keep forming alliances and changing sides to keep each other from winning. i think he was also first with paper money... i read all this in 'genghis khan and the making of the modern world' - pretty good book. basically he either made a place better by stopping capital crimes, or torture, or in the case of europe he made it better by kicking everybody's asses so badly and then leaving that they had to advance out of fear that he'd come back. also he only really got into eastern europe, and decided it was a stupid place - that's why he turned back around.)

funny news from china

Dude,

Congrats. Your blog has been selected for censorship by the Chinese
Government. Even if I could fid a way to read it, well, they'd shoot me.

Actually, it's probably the hosting service your using. Free, unrestricted,
global methods of disseminating information are generally frowned on here.
I can probably do a run around of the 'man' by setting up a proxy, or some
such hacker hoopla, but that'll take me a few days.

Hey, check out World of Warcraft. It's online goofy fun. I have a troll
with a big axe and a Jamaican accent.

Respect,
Gavin

sunshine part 2

i forgot to mention that at the bbq we ate 2 large steaks, 4 porkchops, and some chicken with a little greek salad between 4 people. i'm still kinda feeling the effects.
also i discovered last night that sarah cuts to the hoop pretty well, and has good hands to receive passes. doesn't finish so well in the paint though, and ya gotta tell her when she's on offense and defense in a half court game. she's plucky, just prone to losing track of the game due to overwhelming fits of laughter and hilarity. i should also mention that she shows a good appreciation and knowledge of the finer points of the rules of basketball.

also at the baseball game, potentially awkward time was averted by a good long discussion about what music would be played as our theme music when we're stepping into the batter's box. (peter, my old boss, is a really great guy, just kinda quiet and we might need some practice making conversation outside of work). anyway, baseball theme music - i couldn't narrow it down very well. here are some of my ideas though
"black steel" as covered by tricky (and maxine quaye)
'sweet leaf' by sabbath
'back in black'
'good times bad times' by zeppelin
'run to the hills' by iron maiden
'follow your heart' by triumph
'alive' by pearl jam
'final countdown' by europe
'welcome to the jungle' by gnr
'i'm a cowboy' by kid rock, although 'bah wit de bah'(spelling?) also works well
i'd wanna do 'let's get it on' but i'm not sure it sets teh right tone
also i couldn't come up with any good country that would work
probably 'welcome to the terrordome' or 'shut 'em down' or even 'bring the noise' by public enemy would also be good
i remember this song from high school that we used to play for the wrestling team warmup called 'sword in the stone' but i don't remember who it was by.

maybe if i was injured but sacrificing for the team to pinch hit in the bottom of the ninth, with the bases loaded, two out, and down by 3 or 4 runs, then i'd like 'brothers in arms' by dire straits to be played as i limp/drag my hurting body slowly and painfully up to the plate. peter thinks this scenario would work better if i was a bullpen pitcher coming into the game, while i got my warmup pitches

thank god for the sunshine

so we've had a decent long weekend. started with no plans and ended up really having plenty to do. friday night as you may remember i played basketball. good clean fun.
saturday we ... we did something during the day... hmm... oh yeah! first we had raspberry pancakes. then we did a little shoe shopping. then we headed down to the rog-mahal to see the jays game. thanx again jeff and kendra for the tix. we ended up taking one of my recently transferred bosses cuz he's one of the very few people i know in town who like baseball, and another co-worker. perfectly reasonable way to spend an afternoon in my opinion. then we came home and rented "garden state" (good first film, but not particularly insightful...no surprises...decent but not astonishing performances...overall a 7 out of 10 i guess...great soundtrack, but perhaps a little too familiar to those who work in retail this year...) and watched that with a couple friends. then we got up on sunday morning and got a phone call to go see amanda and jackie in dundas for a big meatie bbq and some beers, oh yeah and to watch the spurs/suns game. a very nice time was had by all. dundas is quite pretty. after dinner we walked down to the park and shot some hoops too. we woke up this morning in time to come back to the city and head straight to the distillery district to see beth (jen's partner) play at the distillery jazz festival in a band called 'les singes bleues'. they were not too jazzy after all, more french quarter caberet (ie. they were ok). we were early enough to find a great table that stayed in the sunshine for the whole performance, where i had a couple beers. god the sun felt good on my face. first time this year i've really spent time in the sun. it really capped the weekend off so nicely. i zoned out a lot just enjoying that feeling.
the only downer this weekend is the realization that my career/job/financial situational dissatisfaction is getting really hard to ignore and that it's making me pretty unhappy. maybe more than i realized. i'm very tired of being poor, broke, and pretty much lacking in job satisfaction or future prospects. actually that's not entirely true. i've been encouraged to apply for promotions with indigo/chapters, and the initial promotion would increase my salary by about 35%, but that still doesn't really put me in a bracket to start making a life, looking for a house, saving for retirement or really anything other than a somewhat better standard of living. also i've already been passed over for promotion 4 or 5 times. starting to not feel so good about that either. i'm turning 30 in a couple months and i'm still in retail, not even retail management. at least i finally got my first credit card. i can't seem to put my finger on any kind of future or any kind of dreams or ideal job situation really. i don't really have any dreams left when it comes to making a living. this whole making a living / making a life question has really affected me. raise your hand if you think this might be exactly the reason(s) that i can't really sleep through the night these last 6 weeks. sarah is very keen on me looking into career counselling but it runs around a $1000, and what if they don't really tell me anything?
so general underlying feeling = sense of failure at making any kind of life.
apparently, if mere's blog is the one that makes michelle cry, mine is the one that is depressing?
maybe as i practice this whole blog thing i'll get better at saying cool and interesting things.

i have a feeling i may have gotten a sunburn on my forehead...also i'm feeling kinda sleepy...2 beers + 2 hours sunlight on face = nap on couch.

still reading "40 words for sorrow". still pretty ok.

nba tips - so the suns lost game one of the western conference final. tough break. they looked like they coulda won if only a couple more shots, a couple less turnovers etc. basically i think this game was closer than the score indicated. interesting to note that the suns (best offensive team in the nba) got beat by the spurs (best defensive team) with the spurs scoring almost 120 points (yes that's a whole lot, especially cuz the spurs average around 85 - 90 pts/game). the best defensive team didn't win by playing defence either, cuz the suns also scored 110+ points. steve nash, aka kid canada, played a pretty good gritty game, even if it wasn't on par with his last 3 astonishing performances. i still think this series has a long way to go. maybe the full 7 games. i look forward to seeing what adjustments teh suns make.
in the east, i look forward to seeing shaq play as competitively as he has at any point in his career, against detroit (the team who beat his lakers in the finals last year). but now he's with miami and he's also trying to prove that he is worth more than that punk kobe bryant, that kobe was a selfish punk, and the lakers will regret the way they handled his exit. but dwayne wade's performance should be the other great storyline to watch. i don't think detroit really has a player who can guard him. a couple guys are quick enough but not big enough or strong enough or athletic enough. the real question in this series is whether miami has enough good enough players. detroit may have the best overall, with no weaknesses in their lineup, but miami has two of the best players in the game, and everybody else is still pretty good but...
only time will tell. i'm still rooting for a miami pheonix finals. with a san antonio and miami series as second best. san antonio and detroit would be the worst most boring series ever.
that's my two sense. wonder if 'modern-girl- sarah' has anything to add? jeff? gavin?

where to start...?

hey
friday evening. another day/week over with. only reason i'm not drinking beer right now is cuz i'm supposed to play basketball tonight. and then i'll drink beer.
so consider me called out, goaded, into setting up a blog finally. y'all gotta understand that you've set the standard pretty high for what a person's gotta come up with on his or her new blog. depth, perception, prose, insight, poetry, good quotes, cultural awarenesses... well i'll try but i expect to get some response when i go on about basketball too. (btw i predict a pheonix - miami final with pheonix maybe winning it all...if...if...if the suns can get past the spurs. both series would probably be extremely exciting and contribute to my poor sleep quality these last two months - stupid western time zones...)
i haven't been sleeping very well for the last couple months almost. no matter what i do i will wake up sometime between 2am and 4am for up to an hour, maybe more than once. i have only managed to sleep through the night twice in the last 6 weeks. wearing me down.
not really much to say in an introductory post i guess. probably the next post will examine my quarter-life crisis and my gradual realization of my actual age, as well as questions around self-perception.

currently reading - 40 words for sorrow by giles blunt. only the fourth actual mystery i've ever read. so far so good. (melo)dramatic title appeals to me. lacks the awesome power of metaphor and snappy comebacks and martinis to be found in raymond chandler (the only other three mysteries i've read), but is still entertaining. i suspect that this will be another example of good story and good writing but without the beautiful/quotable prose i will seek in my next literary selection.

my girlfriend is amazing. she's making me a grilled cheese as i type. god i love her.

of note - this font is called "trebuchet". nice.